Prior art car washing systems commonly utilize rotary brushes consisting of a motor driven shaft and a covering of long plastic strands which contact a vehicle being washed to remove dirt and grime. Water or the combination of water and detergent is typically sprayed in abundance onto the vehicle surface as the brush contacts the vehicle.
Another prior art car washing device comprises a curtain or series of curtains made up of vertically depending cloth strips, usually felt, which hang into the path of the vehicle and which contact vehicle surfaces in a scrubbing fashion as the vehicle passes along a wash lane, or in the case of a rollover washer, as the gantry containing the cloth curtain passes over the stationary vehicle. Again, water or the combination of detergent and water is sprayed onto the vehicle during the scrubbing function. In some cases the scrubbing action is enhanced by reciprocal lateral motion of the hanging curtain.
Based in part on the belief that the cloth strip is less harmful to the painted surfaces of the vehicle, a preference seems to be developing for the cloth strip washes. However, it is generally recognized that the hanging cloth strip washer, even with the reciprocal lateral motion features described above, is inferior to a rotary brush as far as the scrubbing function is concerned. Attempts have been made to produce a rotary brush consisting of cloth strips rather than plastic bristles, but this device has been unsuccessful for two reasons: first, the cloth strips are fairly long and tend to hang up on wiper blades and antennas and, in some case, to bend or even tear these accessories off the vehicles and (2) the cloth strips tend to cave in when a vehicle approaches a brush and this often results in damage to the support shaft or to the vehicle due to direct contact between the vehicle and the shaft.